Well, as crappy as the customization procedures are, I do have to give them credit for following through on their assertions that we will be able to customize our theme and add codes, use our domains and favicons without paying a monthly subscription.

I've been able to approximate if not fully convert my themes, and have just submitted my first JS code for approval. It's a random quotes code. The "mother-may-I" approach to the JS implementation is a bit much to take, but o well. It is what it is. I have to say, I don't like the idea that some geeky code guy is going to be reading the personal quotes from our closed group. It seems like an unnecessary privacy invasion.

I was surprised that my cookies were still in effect after the change over. I expected to have to log in again. A nice surprise was that all the work I did on the themes remained and I didn't have to reinstall it. (Although I was prepared to.)

Unfortunately, they did some update that broke the theme on my main board this week. So I spend the evening today fixing the problems caused. Apparently there is another internal update next week that is supposed to break stuff too. Sigh. They leave you on your own to clean up their messes.

But I had no permissions or security problems (that I'm aware of anyway) so far, and I'm trying to keep an open mind.

The fact we need to have codes 'approved' is ridiculous. Don't see how a code snippet can cause any serious harm to the entire platform when it's on a single forum. That doesn't give me much faith in the security of Tapatalk's platform, then agian it isn't exactly a custom forum script like ZetaBoards was, it's a modified phpBB installation *Woopie!*

Glad I left ZB and all this drama in the past, before any of this crap turned up

If they didn't prescreen JS if something bad happened it would be a simple "like posts/topics/member images we don't have the time, staff, nor resources to monitor this" basically DMCA safe harbor in a way.

Since they can prescreen JS codes if something bad does slip though they open them selves up to civil (and depending on jurisdiction and what happened) legal actions. Heck this could also invalidate them from DMCA safe harbor protection of the JS code was ripped/stolen, and the argument can be made "Hey you can do this for JS code why not for member posts?".

Another casualty this morning. The ZNR board we used to build Resource World and set up themes for Theme of the Month has crossed the rainbow bridge into TaT land.

I gave it a globe background in tribute, but I'm not going to try to recreate a theme there.

On another board (a private chat board) I submitted a random quotes code for approval. It was granted after a couple days. I wondered whether it would make the cut, because I'm pretty sure some profanity laws were broken in there... ^_^

So my main forum moved to TaT today. Even though I tried to reconstruct the feeling of my theme, it has lost its elegance. I can't totally configure it to integrate with my website without JS that I can't write myself. Rather than spend time on that, I'll start moving towards self-hosting.

There is a lot of fixing to do from some corruption that happened in merging the data into myBB, but hopefully that can get sorted.

My understanding is that the domain will work until Sept 27, so I have a little time to figure things out.